On-Country, bi-cultural education enables First Nations children and young people to learn from Elders and classroom teachers. This two-way approach supports the next generation to walk confidently in both worlds.
Across West and Central Arnhem Land, Elders reiterate time and time again that they want to see young ones growing up and being educated on Country, in both local Indigenous ecological knowledge and the Australian Curriculum.
In the Northern Territory there are over 30 operating Homeland Learning Centres: remote classrooms attached to a public school in a bigger community. Critically, there is no public record of student numbers, teaching ratios, educational outcomes or facilities associated with these schoolhouses. Consequently, they bear the brunt of the Northern Territory’s systemic underfunding of public education and are sometimes frequented as little as once or twice a month by government teachers. Furthermore, prior to the realisation of self-determined solutions, there were outstations across West Arnhem Land that were without school entirely.
All of this unfairly places life and work on Country in direct opposition to full-time education for the next generation, creating an incredibly difficult situation for Traditional Owners dedicated to caring for their ancestral lands. Given this widespread lack of access to education, it is little surprise that the Northern Territory has the lowest proportion of students meeting the minimum standards for literacy and numeracy, and that only 40% of First Nations children are supported to finish high school.
Since 2015, KKT has supported the movement for bi-cultural, on-Country education for First Nations children in West and Central Arnhem Land. This began with the establishment of the Nawarddeken Academy, which now guarantees access to full-time, K–12 education at all three ranger outstations in the Warddeken Indigenous Protected Area (IPA). It then grew to include support for Mimal’s Learning on Country Program, and the Homeland School Company in the Djelk IPA. Together with our partners, we are investing in the next generation of custodians.
